16 should arrive, we checked on the family setup and learned that the act is at pres- ent made up of ten sons and daughters of Ernesto and Emma Christiani and the six sons of Ernesto's brother, Pietro. Pietro's and Ernesto's grandfather, Pi- lade Christiani, was the head blacksmith at the stables of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, who was crazy over horses, horses, horses. The king pensioned Pi- lade off when he grew old and gave him thirty thousand lire. Well, his grandson, Ernesto, was in love with circus life, so the old man used the money to buy him a small travelling circus. Ernesto be- came a bareback rider in his own show and, as his children got to be ten or eleven, he would train them. He also trained his brother Pietro's children. "Each time we would get to be four- teen, fifteen, Father would say, 'Now comes choice. Y ou wish to be in circus career, you wish to be something else? Say now,' " Mogador told us. "Never did he force us." Only one third-gen- eration Christiani (less than six per cent) turned his back on the circus; he's now a physician in Italy. "Then the Christianis travel with the circus, they have their own Pullman car, with a kitchen in which Mama Christi- ani does the cooking. She has a nice house in Sarasota, where the circus's winter quarters are, but prefers to travel with the children. E very time they play Columbus, Ohio, they stop off to visit the grave of one of their favorite horses, who died there. "Perhaps this is senti- mental," Mogador said. "But you have never stood on your head on a horse or swung under him." We nodded our as- se n t. So far only one of the brothers has been drafted. He is Belmonte, around whom the whole act revolved. Lucio has taken his place, and he puts more emphasis on clowning than precision. "I look at Lucio all the time and I still laugh," Ortans told us. "He looks like falling, and all the time he won't, of course." At this point, Lucio called up to say that he wouldn't be home for dinner after all. We took one final look at Ortans, who is quite a dish, and wan- dered off. Good Faith Y OU can imagine, even if you don't know, what the Union Station in Washington is like at eight in the morn- ing, when the sleeping cars disgorge all the people with briefcases and urgent errands. Through this turmoil, one morning last week, came an old gentle- man in a wheel chair pushed by a red- cap; he had a steamer rug tucked around his knees and carried in his lap the inevitable briefcase "'Then the wheel chair arrived at the taxi platform, every- body fell back. Thereupon the old gen- tleman, who was in his stocking feet, arose, tipped the porter, and walked briskly to the cab. Immediately the mob, sensing an outrageous piece of trickery, began to growl. He stuck his head out the window and held up a hand for si- lence. "Damn shoes got stolen in the sleeper last night," he said. "Have to go to a hotel and wait for my office to send me a Number 17 coupon." Flag Loft A LARGE proportion of the Navy's flags are being made in the flag loft of the Navy Yard here, the work being done on sewing machines by a force of several hundred civilian women employees, all named Betsy. That's ten times the flag loft's normal peacetime complement. Flags get used up fast. For instance, a warship on convoy duty sometimes wears out a set of signal flags in a single voyage, since the wind whips them to shreds. The flag loft was one of the first departments at the Yard to go on a twenty-four-hour- day, seven-day-week basis, and at that the demand is always a jump ahead of production. It makes two hundred kinds of flag, the most popular number being, of course, the Stars and Stripes. This comes in seven sizes, ranging in length from twenty-three feet to two feet. The first are for battleships and the last for PT boats. However, most warships keep several sizes in their flag locker, for different uses. Size No.7, .' : l{ , ;J:: > .' 1'.,....- ", r.' ),.. ? tf,.tlrA '-' ..' "',, . Þt . ...... : :1 .. A . oJ '., ,E CI' ,,- ; .f .: , \ : " ""':O; . ftf* .\i:,-l'., -.; ! ' , ''1.. : Pet. -:..1.. . ;. , . i. .... 4n ,, '" "." . t.."..1t tr . .' ,w ..",tIo ; '1 . . c...'. ,... .' . '. C, tn ,; -:- . ,i ...t, . o . '" ' , ,;;,; "\ .' t,... ...; ' .-...ø.Þ'Jf f:;,; (, Coe.." ' "'." : :: -: > :.. . ' : '. . . . t . ....; .:.... ';'<þ,,'-:' , " : \Iii :' ' " ,",,-,-' . r- , .'0 ' .. '. .... .r-' . .;' ..: .. .... ., .# '. . I' i f- . .. . ' .'". .:! r.' , '....' r ,...,1 - ': -. - '2! ( . cJ UNE 5, 1 9 4- .3 fi ve by nine and a half, is used as a cov- ering for burial at sea. A Navy vessel needs more flags than any shore-bound person would imagine. In the first place, there are seventy signal flags and pennants, which stand for let- ters of the alphabet, numbers, and of ten- used phrases. There's a submarine warn- ing (a black fish on a white field with a red border) ; a church pennant, flown above the national ensign while divine service is being conducted; battalion flags for the use of landing parties (a red one is used if artillery is taken ashore, otherwise a blue one); a com- mission pennant, perpetually flown at the masthead while the ship is in com- mission; a consular flag (a white "C" surrounded by white stars, on a blue field) displayed whenever a United States consul is aboard; a flag used to indicate that the President is aboard; and a flag for a member of his Cabinet. The Presidential flag, which bears the Great Seal of the United States, is the hardest to make, on account of the amount of embroidering it requires. The Navy Yard's flag loft, incidentally, is the repository not only of little-known flags but of little-known facts about flags; for instance, that four hundred people constitute the minim m for a really good human flag-forty-eight of them in white for the stars, nine- ty-six in blue for the field, a hundred and thirty-six for the red stripes, and a hundred and twenty for the white stripes. Until just before Pearl Harbor, the flag loft made the national ensigns of all the other countries, including those of our present enemies. These were for use when a vessel visited a foreign port. The loft gets orders constantly these days for flags of the U nited Nations, but the supply of Italian, German, and J apa- nese flags has remained constant, there having been no need for replacements. The loft made the flags used by Eisen- hower in his landing in Africa, on a rush order. Treatment C AMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, stories are, as we think we've mentioned before, of the boneless, more delicately flavored variety of Boston story. This story is not only about Cambridge but about the glass flowers in the Agassiz Museum there It seems that a nice little Southern girl, the bride of a naval lieu- tenant who is being whisked through Harvard's training course, was whiling away part of a lonely day by inspecting